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SINCE 1985’s “City of Glass,” Paul Auster’s writing has come to compose a canon – a single book of labyrinthine literary references, dark psychology and minimalism. The mind alone has become Auster’s home and voice.

Now, “Travels in the Scriptorium” (Henry Holt, $22) has slipped into that canon. Though steeped in futility and gloom, the book’s lifted sense of nightmare hangs over its ambiguous location, and its characters seem to hesitantly explore a freedom, as does the author himself.

Perhaps it has to do with the surprises Auster has up his sleeve for 2007 – besides the publication of this, his 13th novel, he’ll premiere his second film as a director, “The Inner Life of Martin Frost,” at the New Director’s Film Festival in March, just weeks after his 60th birthday. The film is based on a section of Auster’s “The Book of Illusions” and features Michael Imperioli of “The Sopranos,” David Thewlis and Auster’s own daughter, Sophie. We recently chatted with the man of many mediums over the waft of small Dutch cigars in Brooklyn.

It seems like you have a lot on your plate right now.

It’s true. I don’t know how it all bunched up together, but it did. I have a big birthday coming – a big one with a zero at the end – I have this book coming out, and I just finished a new film.

Which you directed …

I wrote and directed, yes. A week ago, we got the good news that it was accepted for the New Director’s Festival at the end of March.

You’re still considered a new director?

Yes, because it’s only my second solo film. There was “Lulu on the Bridge” in 1998. And it’s not a festival just for first-time directors, so I’m new enough. But I find it moving and amusing at the same time that I’m turning 60 and can still be considered new at something.

So this new book is quite a departure from your last one, “The Brooklyn Follies.”

This one came about in a funny way. I started seeing an image in my head, and I couldn’t get rid of it. It was very simple: an old man dressed in pajamas, sitting at the edge of a bed, hands on his knees, slippers on his feet. It just wouldn’t go away. So I said to myself, “I think I have to explore what this is,” and little by little, I came to the conclusion that it was me, 20 years from now. One thing led to another and a story emerged from that single image.

By the end of the book, you’re aware that Mr. Blank is an author-type figure, whose characters from his other books come to visit him.

I’ve written a lot of novels now, so needless to say I’ve invented a lot of characters who live inside those books. The funny thing is, the characters you invent are real – they feel as real to you as flesh and blood and you carry them around inside you even after you finish the book.

And the great irony, of course, is that these beings you’ve made up are going to outlive you. The writer is going to die, but the books will still be there for anyone who chooses to open [them]. It’s a wonderful paradox, and the book is partly about that.

There’s so much about the act of reading in your books, it’s hard to see how they could be turned into films.

I don’t see how they could do it. There’s not a lot of dialogue, and there actually aren’t a lot of so-called scenes. There’s an ongoing narration, and so I find them very uncinematic.

Since my books are not like films. I had a really good time making “The Inner Life of Martin Frost.” It’s a very small film in scope; only four actors and three locations, and it was made with little money, but shot on 35mm film. It’s almost what you might call a “chamber piece,” certainly not a symphony.

Sort of like the new novel.

Yes, well, I also see it as a portrait of old age. Mr. Blank is like any old person who gets confused, disoriented, doesn’t understand where they are, or why their bodies are failing them. It’s a very physical book in this sense. Also, a lot of thoughts come up about his early childhood, which is something I think happens to old people.

I remember when I was taking care of my grandfather when he was dying many years ago. All he talked about was his boyhood, and the only thing that really interested him were his days growing up in Toronto.

You were honored last year by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz …

He declared a Paul Auster day in Brooklyn, just as a one-time thing. I felt like one of the characters in the “Wizard of Oz” – “Whereas, I therefore declare …” It was very amusing.